This time I'm afraid it is political. (Sorry Kim. Sorry Santa.)
But, considering I practically live with a political pundit, it may be that it's inescapable. I guess there is always the chance that what I say will be removed because blogger is supported by Google, and... you know. Big Tech and censorship.
I'll tell you straight up, I do not vote Democrat, ever. I read their platform very carefully the first time I ever got to vote, and I disagreed with a lot of what they want to happen. And after thirty-plus years they have diverged even further from what I want. Does this automatically mean that I always vote Republican? Well, no.
Here is the prelude (it's a long prelude) to what I really want to say:
1. A few months ago Bruce was going back and forth with a friend of ours about some political thing. I don't usually step into these situations, but this particular friend unabashedly declared that he was, indeed, a "rabid Trump hater." Well, being rabid is never a good thing, to begin with, but I'm not going there.
I replied to this friend that whether you love or despise Mr. Trump, he is still the president of the United States (#heactuallyisyour president), and deserves respect simply because he is the president. And then, out of the blue, I get a response (on Bruce's timeline, mind you) from a relative that I almost never hear from. Now this relative and I are friends—we've visited together, had dinner in each others' homes, etc. Our meeting up lately has diminished to funerals and sometimes weddings, but we are friends. Still, I could practically hear his eyes rolling from nearly 200 miles away as he said, "Oh, please..." and proceeded to tell me how stupid our President is.
2. A friend admits (on facebook) that he believes "abortion is murder, but..." And later he is screeching (facebook screeching) "BUT WHAT ABOUT THE MOTHER?!!"
This friend is going to defend "murder"—not just murder, but infanticide to his last breath because, "What about the mother?"
Well, that's weird. I've never heard of any other murder case where we have to consider the feelings of the murderer over the person who was killed, ignoring the fact that a life was taken in a brutal way. (Imagine if Mr. G.F., a few months ago, had had his body thrown in the trash can, and then everyone started yelling, "It was murder, but what about the feelings of the police?"
Hm. Wouldn't happen.)
3. My niece posts a list (on facebook, again) of the things President Trump has accomplished in 3 1/2 years of presidency. (I'll bet you're not aware of most of them because the news focuses on what a creep he is. More about that later.) She posts this, and a friend of hers demands to know, "Why are you worshipping Trump?!"
Um, she wasn't. She was showing that he actually did accomplish some good things. (Now, this rabid friend of mine might concede that President Trump did some good things, but he would also say that they were done for solely self-serving purposes. Question: Even if he did good things only to make himself look good (which I doubt) does that make the things he did less good?)
4. Let's get back to the press continually reminding of us what a bad man Donald Trump is:
What evidence have they shown us? Some allegations thrown his way? There have been allegations tossed at lots of presidential candidates. In fact, there have been women who have come forward and said that Joe Biden (who may have a giant smile and look like your grandpa, but he's not your grandpa) ...they say that Mr. Biden was "inappropriate" with them. (And that's putting it extremely mildly.)
And if we're going to play the misogynist card, what about Bill Clinton? The first time I ever heard that name was in an ad, where he and Hillary were snuggled up together on a love seat, he was holding both of her hands in his, and they earnestly told us that Bill had had an affair, but that was behind them, and everything was swell now. And I'm thinking, "Who is this guy?" Future events proved that it really wasn't behind them at all. (Unless you were talking about that one, specific affair.)
Or, hey! What about JFK? It seems to be pretty widely rumored that he was a philanderer.
So... Boys will be boys? Unless we are talking about Trump; he is a bad man, a playboy and a philanderer. Which explains why he is still married to a woman who could be a super model and who seems to support him.
Let me be clear: I. do. not. support. "philandering" or being a "playboy" (which is just a term that makes a terrible thing sound cute and harmless). I think it's sickening. But if this is what we are pointing at to show us that Mr. Trump is a bad man, we'd better start looking at some of our other favorites; he might not be any worse than many other "men of the world."
"But he is a racist pig!!!"
Well, I've never seen evidence of that. (He's said some dumb things, but what do his actions show?) I only know what the news says about it. Hmm. The same news that makes 24/7 coverage his impeachment, but little (if any) mention of anything good he might have done.
Wait! Do they have an agenda?
"But everyone knows that he is an idiot with a single-digit IQ."
I'd hazard a guess that you need more smarts than that to be a non-stop liar, and fool at least half the country. Or maybe half the country (the half that doesn't agree with you) also has a single-digit IQ.
Nice. Thanks.
"But he was impeached!!"
Yes. So was Bill Clinton. Who also committed perjury at his trial.
What I will give you is that Mr. Trump can be kind of self-aggrandizing. And I will give you that he can say some really stupid things when he is unscripted. (This could be because he says what he thinks. If he had spent his life in politics instead of in building a business, he might have learned to look and sound just like he should, regardless of what he thinks. But if he is so unguarded in his behavior, at least we know what's really going on in his head—like it or hate it, as you will.)
Well, my purpose here actually is not to defend President Trump. He has lawyers for that.
Here's some more prelude to the actual point:
Even though President Trump was ahead in the polls until midnight on election day, Biden suddenly jumped up in the middle of the night and won the election. Amazing! But Trump suspects fraud and contests the win. This is nothing new.
A similar thing happened in the 2000 race between George W. Bush and Al Gore. In 2000 nobody was calling Mr. Bush "President-Elect" until the conflict was decided. Which was on December 12. So why are all the news and all the magazines talking about the happy days to come under President Biden?
It has not been decided that Biden won the election.
Yet I have relatives and friends who are so very happy that now we can finally have a "good man" in office. (You know, not a wicked man like our current president. Who, by the way, is still president.) There may be some evidence that this good man maybe isn't so good. It's hard to say because all the mainstream news leans hard to the left, and alternative news sources lean hard to the right; there is no middle ground. Whether he's good, bad, or somewhere in-between I wouldn't be rejoicing Biden's win yet.
I wouldn't be rejoicing over a Biden win because he. has. not. won. yet. The news can spin it as President Trump throwing a tantrum, but what he is doing is perfectly legal, and constitutional. Biden really and truly is not president-elect (and, by the way there is no "office of the president-elect"). He won't be president-elect until the courts say so.
But all the news, magazines, etc., as I said before, are telling us that he is. Not only that, but before this marvelous year's election, we were told that "Trump will refuse to leave office." As if he'd already lost the election months before it happened. And we've been told that he would probably have to be removed by (military?) force in January. There is no reason to believe this is true; it's ridiculous.
But THE NEWS has spoken:
1. Mr. Trump is a bad man.
2. Mr. Trump will lose the election.
3. Mr. Trump will refuse to leave the White House.
4. Joe Biden is the president-elect.
5. Mr. Trump is simply pitching the predicted fit.
And we all believe it.
And now, if you're still with me, I'll get to my real point:
Go to facebook. (With the exception of maybe three people, I know that if you're reading this post it's because you saw the link on facebook.) Go to facebook and type my name in the search bar. When I pop up on the screen, right under my name it will tell you what my relationship is to you: Friend. Sister. Cousin. Daughter. Not a single one will say "racist", or "misogynist", or "pro-mask", or "anti-mask", or "Democrat", or "Republican". It won't say, "Political Opponent." You won't see any of those things.
Friend. Sister. Cousin. Daughter. Friend.
But we are being divided into political opponents. We are being divided into enemy camps over every issue "they" can come up with. The news spreads this discord like wildfire. Facebook, which I thought was a platform for friends to keep up with each other, has become a war zone during election years. And this year they are all pushing and pushing and pushing to make sure that we know that Biden will be the next president, while covering up—or glossing over—anything that could prove this to be false. And here's what I think:
Humpty Dumpty will have a great fall.
At this point I don't really care if it goes for Trump or for Biden. Well, I do care, but I care more about this:
No matter who you want to win the election, what happens next?
Do we weep and wail and gnash our teeth because it didn't go our way?
Do we spend the next four years slandering the president because we don't like him?
Or slandering the former president because we didn't like him?
Or because the news tells us to?
Is it going to be civil war? Brother killing brother because we are on "opposite sides"?
We are not!
I hope we are better than this.
